Mayor Ed Murray meets with the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps and Chief Sealth High School student Shelina Lol. The Mayor has been an advocate for students ifrom low income, immigrant and refugee backgrounds.

Mayor Ed Murray meets with the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps and Chief Sealth High School student Shelina Lol. The Mayor has been an advocate for students ifrom low income, immigrant and refugee backgrounds.

Photo: GRANT HINDSLEY, SEATTLEPI.COM

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Seattle Mayor Ed Murray speaks at a post-election rally following Donald Trump's victory in the presidential race, vowing that Seattle will continue to protect the safety of its immigrants, documented and undocumented, and other marginalized communities. less

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray speaks at a post-election rally following Donald Trump's victory in the presidential race, vowing that Seattle will continue to protect the safety of its immigrants, documented and ... more

Photo: GRANT HINDSLEY, SEATTLEPI.COM

Image 3 of 3

Mayor Murray's political fortunes rising at Trump's expense

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Seattle Mayor Ed Murray is going into the new year with upbeat poll numbers, a $228,000 war chest and a political foil -- Donald Trump.

The very vulnerable New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is already running against Trump, with Hillary Clinton not quite squelching rumors that she might challenge de Blasio, who helped run her 2000 campaign for the U.S. Senate.

In Seattle, by contrast, Murray has a 60 percent favorable rating and "unfavorables" of only 31 percent, according to a poll gleefully released on Monday by Hizzoner's campaign.

President-elect Trump received less than 10 percent of the Emerald City's vote last November. And "The Donald" will be watching his inaugural parade next week when Seattle's first official act of defiance will be getting underway.

The city of Seattle will be staging a series of workshops for immigrants and other residents with naturalization forms, beginning at noon on Jan. 20. The event is described as a primer on the rights of documented and undocumented people, and how to help them.

Mayor Murray announced last Friday a plan for $250,000 in investments to support immigrant and refugee students in Seattle Public Schools and their families. He delivered an executive order last Thanksgiving reaffirming the city's commitment to protect rights of all its residents.

The Jan. 20 event is organized by the city's Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, with the mayor expected to do a "walk through" during the afternoon.

The event was prompted by Trump's election and the unease it has spawned. Jaoquin Uy of the immigrant affairs office explained:

"I think one of the biggest differences is that no president in recent knowledge has espoused such policies as a registry for Muslim immigrants, for instance, or potentially creating a new deportation force to round up -- by his estimate -- 2 million immigrants to be deported from the country."

Murray has yet to draw a name opponent for the August primary or November election. He has yet to face a snowstorm of the sort that sent Mayor Greg Nickels on a downward spiral in 2009, or a riot which helped sink Mayor Paul Schell in 2001.

The mayor is bedeviled at times by Seattle's demonstrator class, which seeks to exploit social problems while he grapples to solve them.

The Seattle City Council's resident Trotskyite, Councilwoman Kshama Sawant, is trying to move in on the resist-Trump movement, even though Sawant opposed Hillary Clinton and backed Green Party spoiler Jill Stein in last fall's election.

Local protests get spawned by a pipeline in North Dakota, a demonized Wells Fargo Bank and by Trump's boorishness. Somehow, the Seattle public never gets aroused when the Seattle Department of Transportation takes longer to remake a street (23rd Avenue) than it took to build the Alaska Highway.

The Emerald City will not soon see Air Force One land at Boeing Field, with Democratic politicians greeting a president who rang up huge majorities and attended hugely profitable fundraisers within its boundaries.

Ed Murray and other big-city mayors now have a president to run against.

Columnist Joel Connelly has written about politics for the P-I since 1973.